A Brief Guide to Becoming a Validator or Delegator for Areon Chain

4 min readOct 30, 2023

Hey Areonites!

For those of you who are just joining us, we are starting with a brief introduction.

But if you are already an Areonite and can’t wait to find out how to become a Validator, feel free to skip to the next section. ;)

Areon Network is a comprehensive, decentralized project with a sharp focus on development and user convenience. Our layer-1 blockchain (Areon Chain) is a powerful technology, reaching up to 600,000 TPS and 100 ms speed.

We are on our testnet phase since September 20, and we have just announced an upcoming hackathon for dApp developers.

Validator: Benefits & Responsibilities

Validators play a pivotal role in the Areon Network, ensuring its security, integrity, and consensus. Some of their responsibilities:

- Transaction Verification: Validators authenticate the validity of transactions, ensuring the sender has adequate funds and that the transaction adheres to the network’s protocols.

- Consensus Protocol Participation: Validators are integral to the blockchain’s consensus protocol (Proof of Area), determining how new blocks are added to the blockchain.

- Block Validation: Validators verify the legitimacy of blocks proposed by miners or other validators, ensuring they contain valid transactions and adhere to the network’s rules.

- Node Operation: Validators operate network nodes, maintaining a copy of the blockchain ledger and ensuring its accuracy and consistency.

Since Validators play a crucial role in the Areon ecosystem, they are rewarded for their efforts. They earn proportionally more revenue than their delegators due to commissions.

Additionally, validators have a significant role in governance, influencing the direction of the network.

- Block rewards: Native tokens of applications run by validators (e.g. AREA on Areon) are inflated to produce block provisions. These provisions exist to incentivize AREA holders to bond their stake.

- Transaction fees: Areon maintains a whitelist of tokens that are accepted as fee payment. The initial fee token is the AREA. By the nature of our consensus mechanism, Validators earn transaction fees.

- Prominent Role: By becoming a Validator, you are actively taking part in the process of developing our chain, even more so than any other investor. Shouldering this responsibility means that you become a key agent for the success of our network.

Technical Requirements

Validators must meet specific hardware and software requirements to ensure the smooth operation of their nodes. Some of the key requirements include:

- Hardware:

Validators should provision one or more data center locations with redundant power, networking, firewalls, HSMs, and servers.

The expected hardware specifications include an 8-core, 16-thread CPU with 2.8GHz or faster, 32GB RAM, and 1TB NVMe SSD Storage (2TB+ recommended).

- Software:

Validators should run an Areon node with a proper monitoring, alerting, and management solution. Contact us if you need advice on this.

- Disk Usage:

The blockchain database can grow significantly over time. However, validators can customize configuration settings to reduce disk requirements. Some of these optimizations include disabling indexing, configuring pruning, and adjusting logging levels.

Eligibility

Any user in the system can declare their intention to become a validator by sending a create validator transaction, provided they meet the minimum self-delegated amount of 100.000 AREA.

From there, they become validator candidates. The weight (i.e. voting power) of a validator determines whether or not they are an active validator.

Initially, only the top 50 validators with the most voting power will be active validators.

How to Become a Validator

Those interested in this role must apply first in our Discord server by visiting #ticket channel.

Successful applicants will receive compiled setup files to run on their devices, allowing them to join the network as nodes. Areon staff will also provide snapshots to ensure that the validators can sync with the network swiftly.

To be eligible, applicants must hold real AREA tokens, the official currency of the Areon Network. Additionally, they need to apply for the base asset (TAREA) via the official Discord server ticketing service.

Please check Validator FAQ and also find a more detailed guide to become a Validator for Areon Network here.

Delegator

Users who do not want to operate validator nodes can still participate in the staking as delegators.

Active validators are chosen and ranked based on their total overall AREA staked (this is the sum of their self-delegated stake as well as their delegators’ stake).

They are by no means solely chosen by their self-delegated stake. This is an important property and acts as a safeguard against validators that are bad actors.

You can find more information about Delegators responsilibities and eligibility criteria here:

https://docs.areon.network/delegator/become-delegator